Ruína

© Gabraz Sanna
Ruína
Ruin
Gabraz Sanna
2015, DCP, black/white, 14 min., Portuguese. Producer Gabraz
Sanna. Production company Eu morri em 1999 (Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil). Written and directed by Gabraz Sanna. Director of photography Gabraz Sanna. Sound Raquel Junqueira. Music Gabraz
Sanna. Sound design Gabraz Sanna. Editor Gabraz Sanna. With
Maria do Mar.
A woman reads a poem, but the world doesn’t seem to care.
Contact: [email protected]
berlinale
forum expanded 2016
235
Ruína starts with the false impression that we are about to see a
talking head. The director is behind the camera of a documentary
where a famous singer reads out a poem called “Ruína”. However, in the middle of the film we realize it’s more of a self-reflected
essay about the just distance – or just a distance – between the
camera and the author. While trying to read the poem, Bethânia is
often interrupted by the sounds of the world that insist on invading the narrative’s foreground. The invisible landscape naturally
takes over the film, either with its incidental mechanical sounds
like cars and choppers or also with fragments of animals, such
as birds and even a barking dog. The film reveals itself through
cracks in this gossamer dialogue – between sound and image;
word and ambience; the author and us (the audience). Then all of
a sudden there’s a rupture, and we’re introduced into a whole new
universe, as the singer’s voice is now dubbed clean, and the images reveal, in a more stylized shape, a naked female body swimming in a waterfall. Now we have almost the opposite effect to
the one in the first sequence: the rawness of her image and voice
is now taken over by natural soundscapes. Between all those layers of reality construction nature takes over the film, not only in
its given forms, like waters and animals, but specially in the nature of cinematic representation.
Marcelo Ikeda
Gabraz Sanna, born in 1981 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, is a visual artist
and filmmaker. He started working with moving images while collaborating with ethnic groups as a linguistics student, especially
with the Maxacali. He shot his first film O estrangeiro in 2004, followed by two experimental features as co-director about the contemporary writers Manoel de Barros and Maria Gabriela Llansol.
Since 2002, Sanna has been a curator at the film festival Mostra
do Filme Livre in Rio de Janeiro. Presently he is preparing his first
feature film, which is part of a series on experimental musicians.
Films
2004: O Estrangeiro / Stranger (3 min.). 2005: A Roda / Wheels (12
min.), Plano sequência para surtar os amigos (10 min.), Diferença
ou Repetição / Different Repetition (7 min.), Especulações em torno da palavra punk! / Searching the punk word (7 min.). 2006: Amor
à flor de lá / The Outside Flower (5 min.), Lingua de Brincar / Play
my Tongue (70 min.). 2007: Pequena Abertura Para o Deserto / The
Desert Window (5 min.), Redemoinho-Poema / The Hurricane Poem
(50 min.). 2008: Cães da Vizinhança / Street Dogs (5 min.), Enfim
sós / Lonely then (5 min.). 2009: O Crepúsculo dos ídolos / The Twilight of the Idle (3 min.), Proposição 24 / Proposition 24 (24 min.).
2010: Marisqueiras do Cabuçu / Sea Them (9 min.). 2011: Arrebentação / Ties (8 min.). 2012: Rio do Meu Cabelo / My River Hair (codirected by ‘Sara não tem nome’, 1 min.). 2013: Oceanne (co-directed by Anne Santos, 5 min.). 2014: Sonho de Sara / Dream of
Sara (co-directed by ‘ Sara não tem nome’, 8 min.). 2015: Digitaria
ex Machina (23 min.). 2016: We are Dreamers (co-directed by ‘Sara
não tem nome’, 5 min.). 2014: Ruína / Ruin.
berlinale
forum expanded 2016
236